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Religious Cults and Their Leaders

Nowadays, religious cults are still considered a major issue in the US society because they involve a lot of controversy. That’s why there are both critics and their supporters who emerged. These cults evolved a variety of religious views and beliefs, and their diversity offers a great study into the important practices that affect the religious morals of the modern society. Many conservative and Christian leaders keep insisting that any group that is non-religious is called a cult, so many people can be considered cultists according to this definition.

The best definition establishes cults by their lifestyles or practices instead of different religious beliefs. Basically, cults can be defined by having their all-powered leaders who claim that they have the necessary attributes of power. For many years, people turned to religions in hard times, and different economic, social, and politic changes made them want to turn to new religious practices and other gods only because their traditional ones failed to protect them.

For instance, Native Americans had their unique religious beliefs and colonies also brought their own practices, including Mormons, Catholics, Christians, Puritans, Lutherans, and others. The development of new religious cults starts when all of these people started interacting, and there were other factors that contributed to their development. Power shouldn’t be used without good intentions, but the most powerful people in the world fail to do that, so they use it to harm others. Adolf Hitler is one of the best examples that prove this statement. The same rule applies to some political and religious leaders who used power to manipulate people in lower classes.

A perfect example of power-abusing cult leaders is Reverend Jones because he was the one who initiated the practice of ritual suicides to protest fascism and racism. He thought that he had good intentions and wanted to save the world from its collapse, he was an insane person who overused his power and killed almost 1000 innocent people. His protests and cult was developed for good moral principles, but everything ended up badly. Finally, Charles Manson is another example of cult leaders who abused their power, and his intentions were quite different because he wanted to revenge others who abused him in the childhood, so he was a selfish man.

Nowadays, religious cults are still considered a major issue in the US society because they involve a lot of controversy. That’s why there are both critics and their supporters who emerged. These cults evolved a variety of religious views and beliefs, and their diversity offers a great study into the important practices that affect the religious morals of the modern society.